In many common scenarios and settings, data (e.g., as stored in files, objects, records, etc.) may be accessible to and/or shared by numerous applications, users, etc. Requests/attempts to modify such data may be received from multiple sources and the processing of such requests must be managed in order to ensure that the data remains consistent and is not corrupted. One approach to managing such requests entails ‘locking’ the data and processing the referenced requests sequentially. However, such an approach entails considerable inefficiencies and can limit the performance of applications that may depend on the referenced data.